2022: ODM targets election of 15 female governors
From left: ODM Women League President Beth Syengo, Nominated MP Dennitah Ghati and Migori Woman Representative Pamela Odhiambo during the Migori County Women Conference last September. The women are targeting 15 governor slots in the 2022 election.
What you need to know:
- ODM Women League President Beth Syengo, says they seek to have 20 female senators and an equal number of MPs.
- ODM is the only party that has so far, pronounced its outright commitments to raising the number of women political leaders.
ODM Women League is targeting the election of 15 female governors in the 2022 general election.
League’s President Beth Syengo, said they also seek to have 20 female senators and an equal number of Members of Parliament (MPs). Further to that, they are pushing for direct tickets for five women in each of the 47 counties to contest for the position of the Member of the County Assembly (MCA).That would total up to 235 female MCAs from ODM, almost three times the total number of female MCAs elected in 2017.
“My vision is to have an increased number of women in elective and appointive positions,” she said on December 9, during an Annual Human Rights Conference by Journalists for Human Rights (JHR).
Millie Odhiambo
She said her deliberate efforts to push for more representation of women in political leadership have yielded fruits.
“In 2013, ODM had only one female MP Millie Odhiambo and because of my efforts, the number went up to five in 2017,” she said even as she recalled how she went to Rangwe to campaign for Dr Lilian Gogo who finally won the parliamentary seat.
She said the league has developed a manual for training women on how to successfully contest for the elective seats, observing that the training involves equipping them with skills on how to effectively communicate, package their development agenda and fundraise.
“We are going to the women at the grassroots to encourage them to vie. These are the women who are always forgotten but they have the potential of getting into leadership,” she said.
They have already covered 21 counties.
Join politics
Ms Syengo who in 2007 challenged Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka in the Mwingi North parliamentary election, encouraged women to believe in themselves and go for the seats of their interest.
She had then resigned from her teaching job to join politics and “many people thought I am out of my mind…but I said I believe in myself and I know I can make a better leader.”
ODM is the only party that has so far, pronounced its outright commitments to raising the number of women political leaders.
Furthermore, political parties fielding candidates in next year’s general election will have no option but to have at least two-thirds of the nominees being women.
Last August, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced it would reject nomination lists for parliamentary and senatorial elections that had not complied with the two thirds-gender principle.
